Maybe it shouldn’t come as a huge shocker that the studio behind World of Tanks is into (pause for punny effect) heavy metal. Wargaming announced this week that it’s planning on infusing its soundtrack with heavy metal music from musicians around the world, starting with a special track by Akira Yamaoka. Additionally, the studio has teamed up with heavy metal band Sabaton to produce a game-themed music video of its hit Primo Victoria and create an in-game tank to match the song. For the music video, the band went to the Arsenalen Tank Museum in Sweden, where they drove around in an actual tank and reportedly crashed through a wall. Hopefully on purpose.

The Primo Victoria tank is now in the game, and both Sabaton and Akira Yamaoka will be joining Wargaming at Gamescom 2017, with the former doing a live performance for fans.

Meanwhile, Wargaming has announced the start of War Stories, a series of PvE story episodes “offering tankers the chance to relive historical events, discover alternate histories, or play-out fantasy campaigns.” Trailers down below!

MMOs these days shy away from calling themselves massively multiplayer, so it’s always strange when a game that we wouldn’t assume is an MMO confidently adopts the label. I’m talking about Foxhole, a war game we might have binned alongside World of Tanks or PlanetSide 2, but it appears to be more like Battleground Europe, as its devs call it a “massively multiplayer game where you will work with hundreds of players to shape the outcome of a persistent online war.”

“Foxhole is a large scale war game with emergent gameplay and unique sandbox features. The pre-alpha version of Foxhole has already been live for over a year and over 200,000 players have helped us shape the game as it is today. The process of developing the game with a live audience has allowed us to deliver on the gameplay that makes Foxhole so different from other online war games. We hope to continue this journey of development in Early Access, and make Foxhole an even better experience than it is today.”

Did we say early access? We did — the game hit early access yesterday and has surprisingly good reviews, probably because it’s a lot more finished that most of the pieces of crap that stumble into the program.

On the PC front, there’s been movement at the bottom of the list, as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and ROBLOX (seriously) have kicked CSGO and New Westward Journey Online II to the curb and knocked World of Tanks and Overwatch down a few pegs. World of Warcraft remains at #6, thanks to last month’s recombination of east and west. It’s a weird saga.

On consoles, however, Overwatch inched up a place and Grand Theft Auto V surged to take the top spot, in spite of its messy modder confrontations this summer. “Despite negative press over community-created-mods decisions, Grand Theft Auto Online experienced its most successful month this June on the back of [its] newest DLC,” SuperData says.

The mobile category has seen a huge shakeup as well, as Honour of Kings leaped from 10th place to 1st, pushing down Clash of Clans and Clash Royale — the firm estimates Honour of Kings made over $150 million in June. Pokemon Go remains noticeably absent from the top 10 lists this summer, but SuperData gives it a nod anyway.

The MMO industry moves along at the speed of information, and sometimes we’re deluged with so much news here at Massively Overpowered that some of it gets backlogged. That’s why there’s The MOP Up: a weekly compilation of smaller MMO stories and videos that you won’t want to miss. Seen any good MMO news? Hit us up through our tips line!

The team said that it modeled 1,232 buildings to recreate Dunkirk for this event: “In Operation Dynamo, ships are moving from Dunkirk to Dover through massive minefields of the Dover Strait. The Dunkirk coast is a narrow strip of land on the bottom of the Operation area. Even then, the team put a monumental effort into recreating the city of Dunkirk. Our 3-D artists literally pieced together the town based on hundreds of photos made before and during World War II.”

Following up on its original Steam release by Creative Assembly, Wargamingsemi-recently decided to help publish Total War: Arena and present it at E3 2017. It makes a lot of sense, as both companies primarily focus on historical war games and pride themselves on trying to keep things accurate. It’s personally not my favorite genre of games, but I did enjoy history class and always liked when students told me they played these kinds of games because it at least got them interested in their past (though Asian dramas were also a popular “edutainment” option among my students). That being said, I was actually surprised by the process Creative Assembly used in its research — and with Wargaming’s help, tried to gamify it.

Dust off your transmedia synergy bingo cards: Wargaming’s just announced a cross-promotion with the Warner Bros.-backed, Christopher Nolan-produced historical war film Dunkirk. Here’s your fast history lesson:

“The evacuation, known as the ‘Miracle of Dunkirk,’ took place from May 26th until June 4th, 1940, when hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers were trapped by advancing German forces on the beaches of Dunkirk, France. As the battle raged around them, many were transported to safety by the combined efforts of both military and civilian vessels. The history of this massive mobilization and the hopeful, personal stories of those involved will unfold in the film Dunkirk.”

Wargaming is promising a commemorative event in World of Tanks, World of Warships, and World of Warplanes. Dubbed Remember Dunkirk, it’ll include a “series of emblems, missions and more” rolling out through July. The movie itself hits theaters on July 21st. The promo trailer is tucked down below!

The new hotness in World of Tanks these days is ranked battles, which is getting ready to kick off a beta season to iron out the kinks. Along with these increasingly challenging battles comes new types of rewards: improved equipment and directives.

Improved equipment comes in six types, each offering permanent boosts to various tank and crew systems when they are equipped. The only downside is that normal and improved equipment of the same type cannot be stacked. Directives are far more temporary, offering single battle boosts and crew skill unlocks to give an advantage during a fight.

So how do you get all of these new toys? You collect bonds: “Bonds are rewarded at the end of each stage, with the amount you earn tied directly to the rank you’re at, as well as by the end of the Season, with the amount depending on your final standing in the leaderboard. If you finish a stage at, let’s say, Rank IV, you gain 400 Bonds. Rank III brings in 300, Rank II gives you 200, Rank V earns you 500, and finally, if you don’t make it past Rank I, you get 100 Bonds.”

Update 9.19 is now live, and you can get a brief overview of its salient details after the break.

Irritatingly, World of Warcraft has once again been split into east and west, contrary to every other game on the chart. SuperData had split the game for its January report, botched the entries in February and hastily repaired its graphic to rejoin the two, and for March, the WoWs were one from the get-go. Now they’re two again.

The upside for WoW is that its western branch pulled out ahead of World of Tanks in terms of revenue (Tanks was beating a combined WoW last month). Dungeon Fighter Online and New Westward Journey Online II have swapped positions, while the addition of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (and separated WoWs) has pushed Lineage I and Wildlands out of the top 10 entirely. Wildlands dropped down the console list as well; ARK Survival Evolved and Mass Effect Andromeda have dropped from the console chart altogether.

World of Tanks developer Wargaming has apologized for essentially threatening to abuse YouTube’s copyright law to retaliate against an unpaid promotional partner who published a video critical of the company.

YouTuber SirFoch’s original video berated Wargaming for overt pay-to-win tactics; Wargaming subsequently expelled him from its promotional program, accused him of “slandering [the] brand,” and according to chat logs then threatened to abuse YouTube’s copyright claim tool to kill the video if we wouldn’t, as well as cause him lost revenue on future videos by continuing to lodge copyright claims against anything else he published. Wargaming’s statements to the press earlier this week denied attempting to censor the YouTuber, in spite of the logs and its own released Q&A, and obliquely accused SirFoch of lying, of homophobic remarks, and of defaming the studio. The clear injustice of those accusations landed Wargaming on the front page of mainstream and niche news sites and even spawned an incredulous Jim Sterling piece.

The World of Tanks community is in uproar this week over the removal of a prominent YouTuber from the game’s developer-backed promotional program and the deletion of a critical video in a move that smacks of censorship.

YouTuber SirFoch’s latest WoT video [NSFW] aggressively berates Wargaming for overt pay-to-win tactics with its $80 Chrysler K Grand Finals premium tank in what is legitimate but profanity-laced criticism. But after its publication, Wargaming demanded he remove the video, expelled him from its program, accused him of “slandering [the] brand,” and apparently then threatened to abuse YouTube’s copyright claim tool to kill the video and cause him lost revenue on future videos – at least according to the chat logs provided by SirFoch.

“We asked him to remove the video because he abused his status as a contributor and the content he received from us to create a video that defamed our company image with the tone and language he used,” Wargaming rep Ph3lan told Kotaku. A second statement from the company insists it’s not censoring the YouTuber and effectively accuses him of lying about threatening to censor his future videos. (In fact, it appears Wargaming didn’t directly threaten to censor future videos but rather threatened to lodge copyright claims in perpetuity to deny him monetization, having the same effect. There’s also a forum Q&A where Wargaming repeats that refusal to remove videos would cause the studio to “go through YouTube” to achieve its ends.)

It’s patch week for Wargaming’s seafaring World of Warships MMO as the studio lets the Bismarck Campaign out of drydock. From today until June 7th, characters with service records 8 and up can “take part in the most iconic North Atlantic naval operation and decorate your ships with special camouflage that changes the exterior visual look of the ship, including its textures and geometry.”

The campaign is based on the historic chase of May 1941, with seven missions containing eight tasks each. Take part in operation Rheinübung, avenge the destruction of British battlecruiser HMS Hood, and take ships of different classes into battle against German raiders, attack enemies with torpedo bombers and more!”

The update further includes a new collections feature, updated user interface, new ship skins, updated ship exterior graphics, new signal flags, and two new ships: French tier VI cruiser De Grasse and American tier VIII destroyer Kidd.

The MMO industry moves along at the speed of information, and sometimes we’re deluged with so much news here at Massively Overpowered that some of it gets backlogged. That’s why there’s The MOP Up: a weekly compilation of smaller MMO stories and videos that you won’t want to miss. Seen any good MMO news? Hit us up through our tips line!